The field of gender and women's studies emerged from the contemporary feminist movement with the initial goal of bringing women and their experiences more fully into knowledge.

How do gender, race, class, sexuality, and age contribute to the formation of social identities? What role do ensuing power differences between these factors play in our globalized and mediatized world? What measures have been taken, in the past and the present, in order to prevent discrimination and exclusion? And how do academic, cultural, artistic, journalistic, and policy-making institutions respond to these societal challenges?

Emancipation, the recognition of differences, and awareness of intersections of gender with other factors of identity-making (class, race, age, sexuality, etc.) are crucial tools in analyzing social and cultural relations in today’s postcolonial and post-secular societies.

The conference explores the ways that femininity and masculinity affect an individual’s thought process. This is relevant in a variety of realms, such as social organizations and institutions, interpersonal relationships, and understandings of identity and sexuality.

Power will also be explored as it relates to gender and other forms of identity, including sexuality, race, class, religion, and nationality as encompasses interdisciplinary fields, which include exploration of the histories and experiences of diverse women and men as well as studies of sexualities, masculinities, femininities, and gender systems in society. The conference will also welcome studies that analyze how gender plays out in politics, intimate life, culture, the workplace, athletics, technology, health, science, and the very production of knowledge itself.

The relationship between gender and society historically and cross-culturally, the changes now occurring in the roles of women and men, the participation of women in the major institutions of society, and women themselves are among the topics to be included. Historical, contemporary, and transnational analyses of how gender and sexual formations arise in different contexts such as colonialism, nationalism, and globalization can be mentioned as important points of discussion.